A Wizard in Mordavia: Diary of a Mage
by BigCow
Summary: The story of Quest for Glory IV told through the eyes of a magic user. Recorded in diary format and covering the events of the game with each day serving as a single chapter. Brought to life with a bit of realism, and a dash of humor familiar to QFG fans
1. Chapter 1

**Day 1:**

Something's wrong here, and I don't know what. I'm not just saying that because I spent the day being ripped away from a celebration with my friends to an unknown land fraught with danger. That should be par for the course by now. The reason it concerns me is that I have no idea why I'm here, who wants me here, or how I even arrived here. None of it makes any sense.

I'm writing this from the Mordavian Inn, a charming little establishment frequented by the local residents who take about as well to unexpected strangers as genital warts. They're willing to tolerate me insomuch as they understand that my being here is inevitable, but you can't shake the feeling that they'd prefer for me to move on or just disappear quietly in the night. And the way that innkeeper was waving the garlic in front of my face left me thinking these people have a few issues.

When we last left our hero (ha ha), he was engaging in a short-lived celebration over the defeat of a demon wizard and saving yet another land from enslavement or annihilation. For those of you keeping score at home, this would make me the Hero of Three Lands, not that anyone in this part of the world would actually care or believe me. I was just taking a sigh of relief at no longer worrying that any misstep on my part might doom the land of Tarna to thermonuclear destruction, when I found myself being torn away by a terrifying and powerful magical force.

I'm no stranger to the world of magic, as you might guess from my profession, but this was beyond anything I had experienced myself. In that single instant, I was caught up in a terrifying nexus of energy as my essence was transported across the dimension of space, only to be dumped in a rather dark and confusing tomb. The last thing I heard was Rakeesh calling out to me, warning me of dark magic afoot, and then it was all gone. The world of Tarna disappeared in front of my eyes and I found myself surrounded by darkness. I fell to the ground and looked around to see... well, a whole lot of blackness. Nothing too intimidating by itself, but none of it made any sense. One moment I'm at the top of my game, the next instant I can't see my hand in front of my face. I had nothing but the clothes on my back left to me, unarmed and defenseless and with no knowledge of my bearings.

The convenient thing about being a wizard of course is that you never are truly unarmed. So long as you are in control of your wits and your body you have more skills at your disposal than most geared-up warriors could boast about. The first thing I did was seek some illumination to my problem. A simple juggling lights spell revealed my surroundings to be what looked like a dark tomb with skeletons scattered around, and a dark altar sitting imposingly in the center. Oddly enough the floor of the whole room seemed to resemble the skeleton of some giant beast. Not bad for décor, but not terribly impressive either. I couldn't help but think that somebody must have gone to a lot of trouble to steal me away from Tarna and put me here so they could bury me alive or something. There are a lot easier ways to kill someone, especially if you aren't in a hurry.

After exhausting what my physical senses could tell me, I tried reaching out my mystical senses to get a feel for what magic existed in the place. The result was overwhelming, even for a seasoned veteran like myself. I had to quickly close off my mind to avoid being mentally filleted by the sheer amount of mystical power pervading the area. The impression of something very dark and malevolent lingered in the area, resting just beyond the edge of consciousness, and I had no desire to wake it up. It took a few moments to compose myself and avoid going into a panic. Everything around me was obviously magical in nature, but dark and twisted beyond what I had ever dealt with. I started to wonder if this was just some giant trap, if someone or something had left me here to be consumed by part of the dark force I had felt.

The innkeeper just knocked on my door to inform me that he was going to be locking up for the night. For the record, the door to the inn is currently covered in a collage of padlocks, bolts, and bars with the kind of security you'd expect to see on a bank vault. Any robbers trying to get in would probably be forced to give up out of boredom alone. A row of crosses line the doorway as well as another likely redundant circle of garlic. He warned me to stay in my room and not to so much as open a window unless I wanted to be consumed by beings of pure darkness. Seeing as how I'm his only customer you'd think the guy could be a little nicer.

Back to my earlier horrifying adventure: I began to make my way around the cave and search the skeletons to learn what I could. A few copper and gold coins, a flint, and a small dagger rewarded my efforts. This at least confirmed that all the other bodies weren't heroic adventurers who had been teleported into a pit of evil and left to starve. Something about the way their bones lay told me these men had died hard. Fighting something, someone, I don't know.

The altar at the center of the room left me hoping I wasn't going to have the time to examine it much longer. It looked like some animal skull was formed around the base of the altar, which was filled with shifting sands. Torches lined the outside like a set of ribs hinting at some unearthly form. This wasn't your standard issue W.I.T. all purpose incantation assistant. It was built for unspeakable rites and dark incantations. Fiddling around with the torches around the altar let me pry one loose, and I was able to light it with a simple flame dart spell. The joys of being among the magically gifted.

With the benefit of some natural illumination, I began to circle the walls of the cave, looking for an exit. A sloping path along what looked like the tail of a giant skeleton finally took me to a door shaped like a giant valve. I was able to force it open with my knife and hurry through. The next room was better lit. What I saw wasn't any more encouraging.

A tall white altar was in the center of the room, and four valve-shaped doors like the one I had just left led out of the room. The altar seemed to grow out of the center of the room and was stained with blood. Between the altars showing up everywhere and the disquieting aura of evil around me I still hadn't managed to catch my breath. My heart pounded in my chest so loudly I was afraid it would awaken every dark creature hiding in these caves. I felt like if I spent any more time in this place I'd get sucked into the blackness myself. I grabbed a long cloth from the ground (left by the cleaning lady?) and made my way up to what seemed to be the source of the light I was seeing.

I came to a giant cave with sunlight leaking through, and a yawning chasm separating me from a far ledge. A rope bridge stretched over the chasm, while a tentacled mass oozed around below. It's times like this I wish I had stuck around W.I.T. long enough to learn a decent fly spell or something. I thought about trying to cross the rope bridge for a brief moment, but it wasn't anything I was cut out for. And really, what's the point of being a wizard if you're forced to do actual physical labor? As the wind rushed around me, I could see a tentacled arm snaking up from below. I levitated into the air, and used the cloth as a sail to carry me over the chasm.

Forgive me for pausing the thrilling action for a moment, but I still have a hard time seeing what I was doing in a strange land with no welcoming party, no immediate threats to face, just dumped in a dark cave somewhere and left to fend for myself. If this is someone's idea of revenge it's hard to think what I would have done to merit such a passive-aggressive form of retribution. It's difficult to see why anyone would do this to me. It's not as though I haven't acquired any enemies in my time. You don't get to be the Hero of Three Lands without cutting off a few toes.

Speaking of which, this is as good of a time as any to explain my tempestuous past, reveal my inner demons, and show forth the struggles and valiant deeds which have made me the man I am today—an unwelcome boarder at the inn of Mordavia who can't manage to strike up a conversation with a match. The first title acquired before my self-styled current one was the Hero of Spielburg. I kind of liked it. Short, to the point, and if you knew what Spielburg was you had a chance of believing my story and buying me a drink or something.

Spielburg was a disorderly mess before I got there, not that I was in much better shape myself. I was a recent graduate of the Famous Adventurer's correspondence course, ready to prove my wit and worth to the world by doing some heroics for the local Spielburgian population. The people there weren't much in the mood for magic tricks unfortunately. Their king was ill, their prince and princess missing, and their kingdom being picked apart by bandits and terrorized by an ogress named Baba Yaga.

For all the fuss it caused, you would have think I charged in there and slaughtered the brigands single-handedly, broke the magical enchantments afflicting half the royal family with my wizardly ways, and out-spelled Baba Yaga at her own game. The reality was nothing of the sort of course. I was unnaturally lucky, in the right place at the right time, and blessed with a good dash of cleverness and ingenuity the locals lacked. There were people there a lot stronger and more capable than me, even if they didn't make heroics their full-time profession. What I had going for me was the will to try and the wit to accomplish what I needed. A fresh beginner in the world of magic, I picked up a few spells and earned myself a nice reward and a new title in the process.

Shapier was a bit of a different story, with an antagonist trying to outsmart me every step of the way. Ad Avis. A case study in my triumphs and failures right there. I fight off his elemental creatures and undermine his corrupt government, but he ensnares me with a simple spell and uses me to unleash a demon. The only reason I ended up doing more good than harm was due to a convenient misinterpretation of the prophesy he relied on and a lot of help from the people of Rasier.

One of the things you learn doing this is that one man is never a hero by himself. I had an entire city counting on me and supporting me in my efforts. They supplied the knowledge and the skills I needed, I supplied the courage and wanton disregard for my own life which they needed. I was able to capture four elemental creatures and free Rasier just because I was there and willing to do what it took. To hear people talk you'd think I was an army or an all-powerful wizard dispensing judgment on all the evildoers I meet and fighting off legions. I'm not. Ad Avis was just one man in the right position of power. I was just one man able to do what it took to stop him. Everything else was just a matter of brains and luck, and I had more allies than him backing me up. His demonic friend almost cost us the city, but we pulled through and I sent him to his grave. Assuming it ends there.

Shapier was also the first real place I had to test my powers and compare them to what a real wizard would be able to do. I managed to locate the entrance to the Wizard's Institute of Technology (W.I.T.) and get the crazy old wizard Erasmus to sponsor me for admission. He was all too thrilled to have a pupil, and I managed to pass the entrance exam with flying colors, despite having only a handful of practical elementary spells at my disposal. And that's when they chose to inform me of what the pursuit of magic was going to cost me. Immersion in the world of the intellectual over that of the real. I had to choose to give up on Shapier and Rasier and devote years of my life to studying and learning more of the magical arts, and maybe add a minute portion to the immense tapestry of knowledge they were attempting to weave. It was a classic bait and switch. Join us and we'll give you more power and knowledge than you can imagine, but we'll also take away every reason you had to seek that power in the first place. I suppose you could consider it an intellectual safeguard. They have control of forces most mortals could only dream of mastering, but prefer not to meddle in the affairs of this world and isolate themselves.

Needless to say, I refused, and was kicked out until I learned some discipline. Oddly enough Erasmus congratulated me on my choice and taught me an extra magical trick of manipulating spells by reversing them that would let me keep up with the finest of wizards. Made me wonder if the old Magus himself didn't envy my reckless involvement with the problems of the uninitiated.

Saving Shapier gave me the status of an the adopted son of the Sultan and the hero of Shapier. Then it wasn't long before it was decided Tarna needed me more than I needed a break. The villages there were all on the brink of war with each other, due to a set of troubles stirred up by demonic influence. Rakeesh and I had the job of playing both negotiators and enforcers of the peace.

Visiting the village of the Leopard Men made me realize just how far my skills had progressed. I, a magic-using hack who'd learned most of his skills from a correspondence course and simply acquired whatever magical knowledge people were willing to doll out, managed to defeat the highest ranking shaman in a society built around the study and worship of magic.

All the best ritualistic magic he had to offer was easily undone by my application of all the basic magical principles I had learned. Whatever illusions, traps, or tricks he threw at me I was able to dispel them and make a mockery of his art. Granted, this only worked because I forced him on the offensive, I scarcely knew any tricks myself that would work against another skilled wizard, but it was rewarding nevertheless. Magic is elegantly simple in its practical application, whereas ritual seeks out complication and complexity for its own sake and to disguise its nature from the ignorant.

The greatest prize I achieved in Tarna, but was unable to take back with me, was the creation of a magical staff. It's an essential component in the arsenal of most wizards, an external agent with which one can concentrate and draw on sources of magical power. And then I did just about the stupidest thing a wizard can do. I detonated all of its energy and undid all my work to get rid of a single foe. It's not as though I had any alternatives. Demonic wizards are even harder to dispose of than the regular variety.

All of which leads me to being transported into a network of caves, forcing my way out of one and past a giant altar, and soaring through the air above some troglodyte monster. I think that basically covers everything so far. After I cleared the ground it was a mad dash towards the source of the light, and a leap through a giant set of stalactites and stalagmites to see the walls of the cave break away to the sky above me.

I rolled onto the ground, gasping for air. I was in some kind of a shallow swamp, with small rocks forming islands within the ooze, and a giant arch stretching over the sections of dry land. The cave formations I had just leaped through bore an uncanny resemblance to a giant set of teeth. I just had time to observe that the cave itself looked like a giant mouth, when it suddenly snapped shut behind me. If I hadn't left when I did something told me I might not have been willing, or able, to escape.

Standing in front of the giant arch, a stone's throw away from me, was a woman dressed modestly in some short of a shawl. Her name was Katrina, and she turned out to be the first and the last friendly face I'd find in this place. She seemed surprised to see me, and rather curious as well. She told me that only one other person had ever escaped from that cave before, and started asking me a string of questions about who I was or how I got there. I barely had the time to stutter off a few phrases, when she suddenly had to leave. Apparently the Mordavian night was very dangerous and I needed to watch myself as well. Mordavia. At least I knew where I was now. She disappeared into the night without another word.

It was night, in fact. And about to turn into morning from the look of things. Stepping out into a swamp was a breath of fresh air compared to being trapped in that cave at least, and I finally began to feel a little less claustrophobic.

This all leaves me standing outside a cave of pure evil, inside a swamp of evil, examining an arch of evil and a six tentacled squid that's most likely evil as well. The cave I had just left was definitely a giant mouth, it looked like it had giant bony arms stretching out from all sides as well. This was either an extremely unlikely natural formation, an eccentric bit of architecture, or some kind of enormous creature mired in the ooze. None of these explanations really satisfied me.

The arch in front of the cave stretched over the path and each segment of it was lined with a magical symbol, five on the right side, and three on the left. Counting from the left, the seven magical signs I recognized were symbols representing pure essence, the heart, the five senses, breath, blood, bones, and the mouth. The eighth symbol wasn't carved into the rock like the others, but it appeared to be sitting on top of the face of the rock. It looked like a golden six armed starfish, or maybe a squid, or even the tentacles of an octopus. As I reached out to touch it, it crackled with energy, and I got the strange feeling that I was meant to take it with me. It's currently resting in my pack. I've been unable to get let go of it ever since. Not that I'd trust anyone else with it.

Passing through the arch took me down a slippery path and into another part of the swamp. Heading north I finally reached a forest to take me away from the gagging smell, and I arrived at the town of Mordavia by sunrise.

To make a long story short, it turns out that I'm trapped here. The swamp extends all the way to the south, and floods and rockslides have cut off the valley of Mordavia from the rest of the world. The villagers don't seem to know what's going on any better than I do, any talk of the cave or magic in general brings glares and fearful looks.

As I'm writing this in my room, I'm grateful that I have at least some measure of freedom and am not as helpless as I expected to be at the start of the day. But it still makes no sense that I should be here. If someone brought me here because they wanted my help, I would have expected to at least meet them by now or learn what was needed, rather than being thrust into the middle of nowhere on my own. If someone wanted to kill me or get some sort of revenge on me, they hardly picked the most effective means of doing that either. The only possibility that I can see is that someone wants to use me. Someone must stand to benefit from my presence here, but prefers to keep me in the dark for now as to why or even who they are.

There are still too many unanswered questions. Why was I brought to where I was? What was the purpose of the cave I found myself in? Why am I carrying around a faux starfish? What is it that everyone here is so afraid to talk about?

I've learned a little bit more about the valley and the people here, but I'll save that for later. Good night for now.


	2. Chapter 2

Day 1 Continued

Just over a day ago, I was a hero with two titles to my name and a slew of allies willing to risk life and limb to assist me. Everyone knew who I was and even if they didn't always agree with me or support me, they at least respected me. In Mordavia I'm an unwanted visitor who really doesn't want to be here either. The villagers are all scared of something... or maybe everything, and they're very wary of outsiders. No sooner do I set foot in this humble hamlet than the local Burgomeister demands to know my business here and stops just short of running me out of town. Keep in mind, the valley is cut off from communication and trade with the outside world and besieged by dark forces, and the first thing that comes to the mind of these people when they see a stranger reaching their village is getting rid of him.

I'd better start by going over some geography. The cave I escaped from is known as the Dark One's cave. After hearing my story about escaping from the cave, the Burgomeister refused to believe me, although I suspect he was scared to. It certainly didn't help making a first impression to be associated what they consider to be the source of all evil in their land. It was apparently the place where a titanic battle took place between the local forces of good, represented by the archmage Erana and the Paladin Piotyr, and the forces of evil, represented by the cult of the Dark One. The cult fought the townspeople and sacrificed their lives to try to summon the Dark One, but Erana used her magic to banish the beast. The cave of the Dark One which exists today is the skeleton of the beast which began to appear in our world before it was banished to the next one. Erana disappeared and Piotyr carried her staff back to the town of Mordavia, where he planted it on a hill to protect the village.

Erana certainly gets around. It's impossible to go anywhere in the wizarding world without running into her it seems. She cast an enchantment of peace on the village of Spielburg to prevent violent thoughts and actions taking place within its walls, although there were a few leaky spots as I was able to attest. She also created a magical garden in Spielburg and Tarna for weary travelers to rest, free from harm. She had been gone for some time though, apparently having vanished generations ago in Mordavia with only some telltale signs of her passing. The mementos she left in Mordavia were a magical garden southeast of town, and her staff in the village of Mordavia, keeping it safe from monsters and making it difficult to hold violent thoughts in its vicinity.

But back to the cave of the Dark One. It bears a legacy of evil people refuse to even mention for fear of bringing it back. The cave ties directly into the swamp, and simply seems to ooze out evil in all directions.

The south of Mordavia is covered in swamplands, with a small lake to the south west. All the roads leading out of the valley have been flooded or caved in. The town of Mordavia lies to the north, and the Castle Boyar where the ruling family of Mordavia used to live lies to the northwest. Other than that, you have Erana's garden in the middle of the forest, a cemetery which is making a killing these days (little graveyard humor there), and a gypsy camp to the northeast.

I thought the villagers here were xenophobic, but the gypsies really take the cake. I take no more than a few steps into the camp when I'm greeted by a pack of wolves and a sole gypsy, who informs me that if I don't back away I'll have my throat ripped from my neck. Tough crowd here.

This takes us back to the town of Mordavia itself. The Burgomeister Dimitri serves as mayor and local law enforcement, as well as judge, jury, and executioner all in one. He's here to keep order and protect the villagers, and he apparently sees strangers such as myself wanting to be involved in everything as a threat to that stability. He keeps an office and an empty jail from what I see. He's also the grandson of the Paladin Piotyr who fought alongside Erana generations ago, although I'm not sure much of the heroism rubbed off.

Incidentally, declaring yourself a hero is considered to be more of an ego trip and less of a selfless profession in these parts. After you've seen plenty of tourists disappear into the night and lose several of your friends to the unknown, you're a little less likely to be inclined to the adventuresome way of looking at life.

Next to the Burgomeister's office there's a store selling rations and supplies. Like most of the buildings in the town it's positively laced with garlic. Strands of garlic draped over the windows, rivers of garlic circling the chandeliers, and avocado and garlic sandwiches trying to pass themselves off as rations. The shopkeeper's name is Olga Stovich, and she knows everything about everyone. This isn't as impressive as you might think, given how few people there actually are in the town. To her I'm an unwanted guest as well as a source of information. Along with rations she sells garlic by the bushel, candy, pie pans, brooms, shopping bags, and oil. Not much point in asking where the mana potions are kept. I think just mentioning the subject might get me burned at the stake at this point.

After the shop you have the Mordavian inn, of which I am currently the only resident. The décor and the menu seem to be entirely based around garlic. If I had any doubts as to whether I was secretly a vampire this place would certainly dispel them. The owners of the inn, Yuri and Bella, make ends meet by selling food and drink to the local townspeople.

Hans, Franz, and Ivan are a few of the regulars. Hans grows pumpkins for a living, Franz is to be thanked for the town's prodigious garlic supply, and Ivan herds elephants. Given the lack of elephants in Mordavia business has slowed down just a bit, but the inn still appears to have accommodations for the giant beasts. Like everyone else the trio of drinkers seem to be of the opinion that I should clear out as soon as possible and try to avoid doing anything or going anywhere if I want to avoid seeing my insides.

The only person other than myself who can be found wandering around in the daytime is an old man named Nikolai, who's apparently quite confused and looking for his lost wife Anna. From what Olga says his wife disappeared years ago, and he's just never accepted that fact. Nikolai lives next to the home of the eccentric Dr. Cranium, who's considered to be as much of an unwelcome stranger as myself. His house is locked up and packed with riddles and enigmas, to hear people tell of it. Science is just as suspect as magic here, particularly given that they're indistinguishable to the casual observer.

The one other resident I've really run into is the part-time gravedigger, lab assistant, and graveyard humorist/comedian named Igor. Igor is a hunchback and a little, shall we say, crazy… but he still has the dignity of being on a higher social level than me. He really digs his profession (little graveyard humor there), and business is piling up. (little graveyard humor there) He also works part-time to help Dr. Cranium in his lab and tries to make more puns than should be legally permissible.

There are two buildings in the back of town. The usual adventurer's guild, and a monastery, which I'm told eats people alive if they so much as ask questions about it. It was built by the cult of the Dark One and abandoned around the time they all disappeared. I was able to convince the Burgomeister to give me the key to the guild today, since no one else with any inclinations to adventuring is likely to show up in the area any time soon and it'll keep me out of his hair.

The guild itself has the usual logbook, some exercise equipment, and a library of books on general adventuring topics, including a tourist brochure describing the joys of Mordavia and an interesting manual on creative casting techniques. The only entrant in the logbook before myself was the Paladin Piotyr. It's from the logbook that I learned of Piotyr's history and the cave of the Dark One, no one in town is willing to talk about their own past. Piotyr led an army to fight the cult, and the cultists mutated into horrible forms to battle them as the Dark One began to take shape in the cave. Piotyr was convinced that all was lost, but Erana was able to banish the Dark One at some great sacrifice to herself. The last thing Piotyr said he was going to do was find the rituals of the Dark One and destroy them… but no further entries were recorded. I can only assume he died before he completed his task.

That covers most of what I know about Mordavia so far. My main concerns are exploring and learning what I can at the moment, as well as looking for any money I can find. I'm a little bit strapped for cash. My current fortune was looted off of a few corpses, which is hardly a renewable source of income. I'd hate to actually have to work for a living. We'll see how tomorrow fares.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 2**

The one useful bit of furniture I have in my room at the moment is a storage chest to fit any extra equipment I don't feel like lugging around. Since I'm a wizard, not a workhorse, there's only so much I'm willing to drag from place to place. Not that I have much on me at the moment anyway. My current possessions consist of the clothes on my back and some leather armor, the only things which survived my magical trip to Mordavia. I have some scattered crowns and kopeks I've looted off those even less fortune (and alive) than me, as well as a small dagger for when I'm forced into close combat. A few of Olga's garlic and avocado sandwiches are all I have in the way of rations. Other than that, I have a key ring with the key to my room and the adventurer's guild, and a few potions and mana fruit which I picked up today that I'll talk about later.

The last item on my list is the only one I've been unable to get rid of. The six-tentacled starfish. Try as I might, I've been physically unable, or perhaps unwilling to let it out of my grasp. Somehow it's tied to this whole mess related to the Dark One, and I wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands. I just hope those hands aren't mine. And I'm not entirely sure I can trust the innkeepers not to rummage through my equipment when I'm not looking in any case, I may need to avoid storing anything too incriminating.

The Burgomeister still seems a little annoyed that I'm still both alive and under his watch, but there's not much either of us can do about that at this point, aside from sending me wandering out into the night. People here apparently don't bother to commit suicide, they just let the local monster population do all the messy work for them. I've tried explaining to the people that I'm a Prince of Shapier as well as a hero, and really should be someone they could both trust and rely on, but from the looks of the things they've seen too many curious strangers disappear already to bother getting attached to one.

Gaining access to Dr. Cranium turned out to be easier than I expected. The door to his house has a large nose with a mustache resting above the doorway, and a chain of bells stretching down from one nostril like you can imagine what. Getting in is a simple matter of being able to duplicate a sequence of chimes. Apparently Dr. Cranium prefers to entertain guests on the basis of their pattern recognition skills alone.

The hallway on the inside was a lot more elaborate than anything I'd seen so far. Marble bricks appear to line the walls, and strange portholes are scattered around the room. The door on the right allowed me to run into the largest Antwerp population this side of Spielburg, and the door on the left was another Antwerp-powered puzzle Dr. Cranium apparently designed to frustrate visitors trying to enter his laboratory. In the middle of the room was a pseudo-scientific device labeled as a Transcendental Receiving Animal Processor, also known as a (T.R.A.P.) for those of us who prefer to save a few syllables.

The T.R.A.P. is an animal catching device designed to play a game of 20 questions with you and figure out what animal you might want to catch, telling you what methods or bait you should use. After a bit of messing around it was a simple enough matter to program it to catch a baby Antwerp for me with a bit of avocado taken from one of Olga's sandwiches, and use the bouncing little beastie to grab a key from the maze. After fixing the good doctor's keyhole, I made it into the laboratory.

Dr. Cranium is I guess what you would call a consistent naturalist. Despite living in a world defined and shaped by what most of us would consider to be magical forces, he steadfastly asserts that everything in nature is a product of purely logical scientific principles.

Given that I'm a magic user by trade, this leaves us with about as much in common as you might imagine. He insists that everything I consider to be magical in nature, including my own flaunting of the laws of nature and manipulation of the elements, is simply a matter of scientific laws which have yet to be fully classified or studied. To him, magic is just the unknown or the unexplainable. And similarly I would consider most of what a scientist like him does to be magical in nature, or comparable to the manipulation of magical and elemental forces which I make my practice. He sees everything as a matter of science and rigorous study, whereas for me it's all a matter of magic and applying one's will onto the universe. Both methods have their own systems of rules and limitations, and both regard the other as a lot of wasteful nonsense. I gave up hope after trying to debate with the Herr Doctor for a while, although he did leave me thinking that half the time we were just saying the same thing in different ways.

Most of the villagers call the doc "mad", although he prefers just "Dr. Cranium". Aside from the obvious difference in our years, we share a lot of the same meddling ways and curiosity about the world around us that makes us targets of suspicion from the locals. My sort of work involves single-handedly taking it upon myself to right wrongs and dispose of evil wherever I find it. He's more interested in bringing the dead back to life and brewing the perfect cup of tea. If he starts breeding skeletal armies or sending out waves of undead zombies to terrorize the townsfolk we may have to suspend our working relationship, but other than that the man seems fairly harmless, just obsessively devoted to his craft.

The self-confessed supernatural skeptic also happened to have in his possession a useful little spell scroll teaching a skill that promised to let the caster glide across large bodies of water, and Dr. Cranium was more than happy to make the spell mine, eager to be rid of the challenge to his view of the world. He also offered to help me out by brewing some healing and poison cure potions when he could find the time, and urged me to come back to visit whenever I felt like it. At least someone in these parts was glad to see me.

Erana's garden turned up a few secrets as well when I took the time to explore it. The garden has plants and flowers which seem to come from all over the world, bonded together by the magical aura that still fills the place, years after Erana's disappearance. Like her staff at the front of the town, there's not a monster in the valley that will go anywhere near it. A graceful pool forms a small moat around a central island containing a tree filled with magical fruit. The fruit, I've found, can only be plucked by a skilled enough magician. It has mana-restoring properties, but vanishes if anyone tries to pluck it physically. Only a well-aimed "fetch" spell can snag it. Enchanted lanterns softly peal out music and provide illumination at night, while one lantern also held a pouch of money I gladly grabbed. After some detailed sensing out of the magical aura of the pace, I was able to find an enchanted tulip in center of the pond which gave me a protection spell to ward off physical attacks. I tried out the "glide" spell on the pool's water as well, walking over water was certainly a strange experience, although I'm not sure what use I'll have for it in these parts, most bodies of water lead to the swamp and I doubt I could sustain the spell long enough to leave the valley.

I've been a little remiss in my rundown of the inhabitants of Mordavia. In addition to the townsfolk and gypsies I've encountered there's also a lone resident named Boris Stovich who guards the gate to the castle of the Boyar. Claims to be no relation to the Olga Stovich who lives in town. He's far less superstitious and more pleasant than the rest of the locals, not what I'd expect from someone whose job is based around keeping unwanted guests out. He's employed by the current residents of the castle, which has apparently been through a few hands. And no, he says I can't expect to have an audience with the nobles any time soon.

From what I've heard the castle of the Boyar used to be owned by the Borgov family, and Boyar was the title given to them, like Baron or Duke or something similar. The Boyar family "disappeared" at the time of the "great disturbance", which I assume refers to the whole mess with the cult of the Dark One and Erana no one wants to talk about. Since then the castle had been empty for years, until it was recently apparently taken over by a cousin of the Boyars. The odd thing is no one seems to have met or dealt with the current inhabitants, everyone here keeps to themselves. Even Boris himself hasn't met the master of the castle, as Boris refers to him respectfully. He's guarded about the details but supposedly there are three main residents: the master himself, a male foreigner, and the master's daughter. I can only assume the master's daughter must be Katrina, the woman I met earlier. She must know something more about what's going on here, although I couldn't say yet whose side she would be on. I suspect I'll need to make my way into the castle eventually, and right now she's my only lead.

All of which leads me to the question of what am I doing here, and who brought me here. None of the local townsfolk seem to be that adept in the kind of magic it would take to bring me here, and while I'm sure Dr. Cranium has done his share of experiments with powerful energies I'd doubt he'd have any motivation to manipulate magical forces he denies the very existence of. As obvious candidates that leaves me with the gypsies and the inhabitants of the castle that might be mixed up in my presence here somehow. Unless if I missed something exploring the valley, or someone outside the valley has taken an interest in events here.

In addition, it's hard to imagine how my presence here could be of any use to anyone. I can thin out the local monster population fairly well, but everyone here is too walled in (literally in some cases) and guarded for me to be of much use to them, and the only things of adventuresome interest here is an old monastery which apparently eats people and an encroaching night they have to be eternally vigilant against. I'll probably just have to knuckle under and put myself at risk to figure out what it is everyone's warning me against, but I'm not seeing any kind of pattern or grand scheme coming out of this just yet.

I've been staying up late in order to be able to practice a bit of magic without fear of

retribution, and one consequence of that is that I seem to have run into another visitor to the inn. A small hairy creature which calls itself a Domovoi, which is apparently some kind of guardian spirit who watches over a house and brings luck to people. It showed up in the lobby of the inn after midnight, sitting on a shelf, scratching its blue furry body and giving me vague warnings about evil and the dangers in the valley. It tells me Mordavia badly needs a hero to keep away the dark magic, but other than that it's not been too helpful. Well, at least I have one fan in this place.


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 3:**

I heard from Olga that Hans, Franz, and Ivan have started a betting deadpool on how long the local foolhardy adventurer, namely me, is going to last. Apparently it's only a matter of time before I do something stupid like rap on the cursed Monastery door or wander around at night and kick the bucket. I got the funny feeling that the only reason she was mentioning this to me was to get some inside information on how likely I was to start poking around in the wrong corners of Mordavia. I told her to wager a few crowns on my behalf that I'd continue to last, but I don't really believe she bought it. At least I can serve as a source of entertainment to these people.

I've settled into a routine over the past few days. Every morning I pull myself out of bed and sit down to a hearty breakfast with a sufficient supply of garlic to ruin any first date, and wander the streets of Mordavia under the watchful eye of the Burgomeister. Dimitri is almost growing soft on me by now, he told me not to get myself killed too far from the town so they wouldn't have to send someone out looking for me. I kill some time in the Adventurer's Guild exercising my non-mental muscles on the workout machine, and practice magic outside the walls of the city where I'm fairly certain no one can see me. Other than that, Dr. Cranium is always willing to chat about some of my past adventures, although we tend to interpret them a little differently, and he's been brewing up some Healing and Poison Cure potions for me so I can try to avoid letting Hans, Franz, or Ivan win their bet.

Most of the day I'll usually spend exploring the Mordavian valley proper, fighting off monsters and getting used to the terrain. When it reaches so much as the evening in Mordavia everyone locks themselves away as tight as can be, and it takes a few minutes just for them to open all the bars, latches, and padlocks on the inn for me. I'm hoping the gamblers drinking on the inside don't ever convince Yuri to leave me out there just to speed things up a little. For some reason a lot of the townspeople aren't particularly chatty around me, which just leaves me with the impression that they're talking behind my back, given how much else there is to do around here. Yuri is a very reserved man, superstitious and unwilling to speak about things he fears he understands all too well, and intensely skeptical of things he does not. According to Olga his daughter was taken from him years ago right out of his home, stolen by some creature of the night. Olga suspects gypsies and werewolves, but she'd say the same if she lost one of her socks. It does his explain his wary attitude though, I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a child like that and just never know what happened to them. Anyway, every evening the people at the inn drink and talk the night away, then shuffle off to their homes, leaving me as the sole proprietor of the inn.

Speaking of the Mordavian Valley, I might as well catalog what I've run into here as well. Your basic Mordavian pest is a deadly white fluffy bunny rabbit. You laugh of course, but these things can be absolutely vicious. It's the cutest thing that wanted to go for my neck since… well, never mind. They're extremely fast creatures and dodge quickly enough to make casting spells a wasted effort, I've learned to just magically charge my weapon and do away with them by brute force. Look a bit higher on the food chain and you have a Wyvern. Wyverns are lesser cousins of dragon, offering a little less annoyance and nil treasure. They spit fire, poison you with their tails, and I prefer to handle them at a significant distance. What with my supply of potions and my legendary skills at running away which have become renowned in three lands, I'm not in too much danger. The last kind of beastie I've found in the daytime is a necrotaur, which is a creature apparently also employed as a nighttime guard for the castle Boyar. Necrotaurs are vicious canine like creatures that prefer disembowelments at close range and can outlast or terrify most opponents. The one I met took a good thrashing, and I wouldn't want to go up against too many in a row, but I was able blunt a good portion of its attacks and blast away it with some spells from a distance.

As far as friendly creatures go, aside from the nocturnal Domovi I ran into, there's a creature known as a Leshy hiding in some of the bushes in the forest which keeps trying to play hide and seek with me. I'm convinced the bloody thing cheats. After I figured out what it was, it also asked me to go on some sort of environmental search and rescue mission for the sake of a single bush. Maybe I can finally win the coveted title of "hero of the plant kingdom." On that same note, there's a suspicious bush shaped-hole in Erana's garden and Dr. Cranium has informed that he's had a little less than perfect success with his experiments on the local plant life. Apparently Erana's garden itself is somewhat of a floral anomaly and an affront to the scientific mind, and Dr. Cranium had tried digging up and relocating a rare plant to observe how well it would fare outside the garden.

It seems like the one person other than myself who's courageous enough to spend time outside the town of Mordavia proper is Igor the henchman and gravedigger. When he's not working the graveyard shift (little graveyard humor there) he can be found in the cemetery picking away at a tombstone for whomever he expects his next customer to be. I should probably be a little worried that he asked me how I spell my name, and whether I'd prefer a dignified epitaph or a dirty limerick to mark my passage into the great unknown. Aside from the numerous Mordavian dead which proves these people aren't joking around about the dangers of the valley, the one interesting feature of the cemetery is a crypt which represents the last resting place of the Borgov family. Igor told me he has the key and intends to hold onto it, it's a matter of grave importance to him. (little graveyard… you get the idea)

Aside from getting to know the local monster population and disturbing the antisocial inhabitants of the valley, the best way to get yourself killed here is approaching the monastery at the north of town next to the Adventurer's Guild. It's also leading the odds on most likely avenues of my death. It's an enormous structure with windows stretching out at several floors, and incredibly intricate carvings lining the front… one carving in particular looks like an enormous six armed octopus. I started to get a little closer to it despite Igor's protestations, when I suddenly saw the sculpture move and reach out to grab me. I leaped back, and it had frozen into place, its tentacled arms still outstretched. Just a little bit freaky. The whole structure seems loaded with dark magic from what I can tell, and cursed to protect against unwanted guests. The villagers are content to leave it alone, although I'm surprised they haven't tried to rope it off or burn it to the ground. Or maybe they already have and failed.

One curious event of the day started when I heard Olga recite a phrase, "may your travels always lead you somewhere" that I had heard just recently when talking to the castle's gatekeeper. She had told me her husband had passed away, so when I asked her offhand if she knew a Boris Stovich working for the inhabitants of the Boyar castle I think it came as a bit of a shock to both of us. Turns out he's her husband, and she had a few choice words for me to say to him, most of which is apparently untranslatable given how much she said and how little I understood. Visiting the gatekeeper again I managed to get him to admit he had a wife and that she was in fact the same shopkeeper in town, he just grew tired of hearing her nag all the time. I get the feeling I've opened up a can of worms with this one. I suppose it's poetic justice that the biggest town gossip would have more secrets and intrigue in her life than anyone else. After both of them denying the existence of the other party to me things are finally starting to unravel.

The only safe places to sleep in Mordavia if you would like to wake up in the morning are the fully secured Mordavian inn, Erana's staff in front of the village, and Erana's graden in the forest. The local monsters and other interesting elements of the nightlife can't even get near the staff in town left behind by Erana or the garden somehow imbued with her essence. I've been playing it safe and sleeping in the inn so far, but if I ever intend to confront more of the dangers here I'll need a safe place to retreat to.

On another side note, I actually may not be the sole proprietor of the inn any more after tonight. Dinner this evening was accompanied by a sprightly gnome doing a comedy routine. Of course calling what he did "comedy" is like calling someone tripping down a flight of stairs ballet. He somehow managed to get his punchlines before the jokes, mangle his puns, and left me confused as to whether I should laugh or cry when it was finally over. "Am I going deaf, or how can people sleep with all these lights on?" "Show me a guy with a million Kopeks and I'll show you a guy who's rich."

Luckily my lack of appreciation for the gnome wasn't just cultural, or I'd give up hope on the Mordavians altogether. Everyone else was as confused as I was and just in a bit of shock at how the gnome managed to suck all mirth out of the room. The whole crowd kept waiting for him to tell an actual joke, hoping, pleading with themselves that he couldn't possibly stay that bad the whole time. If all the strangers they get act like this I think I'd begin to understand the hostility. Just like a tragedy done badly is a comedy, a comedy done poorly is a tragedy. The gnome shuffled away after trading jibes with his unappreciative patrons, and retreated into a previously unoccupied room in the upstairs. I was tempted to go after him, but I'm not sure I could take any more forced comedy.

One postscript to the events of the day is a strange dream I'm not even sure took place. It may have just been my imagination or paranoia seeping into my dream life, but I've learned to trust my magical instincts on these things. I felt like I was being watched, and I thought I heard a pair of voices discussing what they should do with me. The first voice was dark and sinister, and despite not knowing what it was saying I could tell it didn't like or trust me. The second voice was softer and more syrupy, and somehow sympathetic to my cause. The voices faded away as my senses drifted away as well, and I woke up the next morning perfectly alone, and more than a little disturbed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 4: Morning**

I stopped by to visit the other foreigner and resident of the inn, the jokeless jester who gave the excruciating entertainment the other evening. The gnome's name is Punny Bones and in addition to the fact that we're both universally disliked in town, we share a nemesis, the witch Baba Yaga. The gnome's troubles all started when he was telling the story of how I managed to turn the tables on Baba Yaga and transform her into a frog. Punny Bones had just gotten to the part when Baba Yaga was getting hopping mad and preparing to fly off in her hut, when the old witch herself showed up in the audience with a scowl. Oddly enough she didn't choose to fry him on the spot or turn him into a hamster or a mongoose in retaliation; she had a much more exquisite punishment in mind. She cursed the gnome so that he'd be utterly without a sense of humor and unable to tell a joke. Understandably, this has caused his career as a jester to hit something of a train wreck. He came to Mordavia because he heard Baba Yaga had set up shop here. Naturally, this was news to me. I promised to do whatever I could for him, although if the old crow ever got her hands on me she'd probably forget about the gnome altogether.

Now, like I mentioned earlier, Baba Yaga was part of the Spielburg gang that got driven out of town by my dashing heroics. The details were a little less gratifying than that as usual. For my first encounter with Baba Yaga, I stormed into her chicken-legged hut, fearless and secure in my own self-righteous heroism. She took one look at me, cackled to her bat companions, and turned me into a frog on the spot. Keep in mind, to even get that far I had to trade with a magical ice giant to obtain a legendary glowing blue sapphire in order to bribe Baba Yaga's skull guard to let me in and memorize a nursery rhyme to get the hut to stay still. And she zaps me silly (or was it froggy?) and starts whipping out a recipe for frog legs fricasse on the spot. Just when I had made my peace with eternity, she casually mentioned that she might be willing to spare me if I could bring her an alternative dish.

Seconds later I found myself outside with one chance to pluck a mandrake root from a haunted graveyard at midnight, if I wanted to avoid letting her see my entrails on a plate. Having no choice, I was forced to assist her in creating her ultimate and foulest creation yet. A mandrake soufflé. My nostrils still flare when I think about it. Turning the tables on her was just a matter of realizing how predictable the old hag was. I showed up in her hut a second time, and she zapped me with a transformation spell without a second thought. The spell hit a magical mirror I had been carrying and reflected it back at her, leaving her stuck as a helpless frog. She high-tailed it out of town and hasn't been seen since. And now she may have set up shop in Mordavia. She's never been the castle-dwelling type, so I may have missed her in my travels. I'd just better hurry up before she finds me first.

Back to the present, Olga and Boris have quite the bit of drama going on between them, I somehow got stuck playing the middle-man in the midst of their feud. Apparently she seriously thought he was dead after he disappeared and he preferred for her to think that. Boris was hen-pecked minding the shop and living with Olga so he preferred to go off on his own and leave her in peace. Now that I've managed to mess things up it looks like that last part may not be feasible anymore. After letting them cool down for a day I casually mentioned to Olga that Boris felt that her never-ending tide of criticisms put a certain strain on their relationship. She gladly retorted that Boris could apparently never be troubled to mind the shop and do any work, thus precipitating her attempts to scold him. Boris mulled this over and made the well reasoned point that there wasn't much point minding the store and cleaning it since Mordavia is getting dangerously close to a ghost town, so he spent his time eating, drinking, and being merry with the few individuals still alive. I told them both that they'd made some real progress letting their emotions out and really communicating with each other, and that they were much stronger for it. The sad thing is they really do miss each other although neither one wants to admit it or come crawling back to the other. Too bad I never opted to take the Famous Adventurer's Marriage Counseling correspondence course.

Today I enthusiastically wrote in the logbook for the benefit of posterity and all future adventurers seeking to learn from my example that I had performed my first heroic deed in the valley. I planted a bush. Try to contain yourself, I know it's not just every hero that's willing to invest himself so fully in saving the world, one piece of flora at a time. Am I awesome or what? I can't take full credit of course, this particular piece of ecological altruism was inspired by the Leshy, who appears to be something akin to a guardian over the forest. The creature looks like a thin oak tree, with a mat of leaves for hair and a pair of eyeballs blinking out of knotholes in the wood.

To the south of the forest where grasslands give way to swamp and a little to the west of the dark one's cave you have a cliff next to a stone obelisk in the shape of a squid. The bush the Leshy was so worried about was transplanted by Dr. Cranium to the swamp, and left stuck in the face of the cliff behind a pile of rocks. A few well placed spells were able to loosen the pile and snag the mis-planted plant, and at the Leshy's suggestion I placed it in Erana's garden, where it had nothing short of a miraculous recovery. It's the little things that really justify my philosophy of reckless interference in the world around me.

And speaking of Dr. Cranium, he filled me in on a few details today of what happened to old man Nikolai's wife in his own objective, scientific, and utterly callous fashion. She was friends with the scientist, and was trying to bring him back some berries from the forest when she disappeared. My own Mordavian wanderings make it all too obvious what must have happened at that point. The topic of the personal sacrifices we must all undergo for the sake of science sparked the good doctor to ask me to get some Grue Goo for one of his experiments. Calling it "Grue Goo" is how Cranium rationalizes the magical properties of the swamplike ooze around the cave of the dark one. He supplied me with some of his legendary "Rehydration Solution" in return, it's supposed to radically hydrate anything to which it is applied. Not surprisingly, the main ingredient is water. I'll keep it in mind if I start carrying around instant meals as an alternative to Olga's garlic and avacado sandwiches.

Aside from the veiled hostility from the townspeople and the open hostility from the local monster population not much is new in Mordavia, so I might as well review some of the skills I've acquired so far. The most basic spell I know is "Zap", which just gives a drawn weapon an extra bit of a magical oomph. Not particularly impressive, but it gives me an excuse to practice magic more and work out less. "Detect Magic" examines the magical auras given off by nearby spellcasters or artifacts, and "Reversal" reflects incoming spells back at the caster. "Protection" is a spell I got recently which lessens the blow from physical attacks, and for offense I'm a fan of "Flame Dart", "Force Bolt" and "Lightning Ball" for elemental or non-elemental damage, although "Dazzle" can sometimes confuse them long enough to make a get-away. That mostly covers the stuff that keeps me alive and out of danger, but the field of magic is most interesting for all the effects enabled with a magical touch. "Trigger" sets off a magical enchantment or trap, which can lead to revealing enchantments or detonating stored energies if you're not careful. "Open" works like a thief's dream, opening doors or passages of almost any kind. "Fetch" sends out a magical lasso just in case you want to grab your coffee at the other end of the room, and "Calm" works on animals and the elements alike to put out fires both physical and spiritual. "Juggling Lights" is a quirky one that lights up the sky with glowing balls of magic, and as far as getting around goes "Glide" soars over bodies of water and "Levitate" sends you up in the air and away from your problems.

Which is precisely what I intend to do tonight. I'm writing this by candlelight in the upper story of the inn. Dusk is beginning to set in and Hans, Frans and Ivan are chatting away downstairs about how much they dislike strangers, how much they don't trust strangers, and does anyone knows when that stranger upstairs is going to hurry up and get eaten by a Necrotaur so they can settle their bet? I'm not making any headway on solving the world's problems at the moment so tonight might be the night to find what lurks in the darkness. My only concern is making it back to town before the inn closes at midnight, so just in case I'm planning on leaving the window unlocked and levitating gracefully down to the cobblestone street. From there another quick spell should float me over the gate and give me enough time to explore the forest before fleeing for my life. I'm somewhat excited and uncertain of what to expect. There are all sorts of legends about creatures which fear the daylight and hunt only in darkness. I'll keep you posted, if I'm lucky.


	6. Chapter 6

I'm back! I've got a backlog of stuff I never updated to here, and I may have found a motivation to keep going thanks to some generous reviews.

**Day 4, Night.**

Well, that certainly was educational. I'm more exhausted than I knew was even possible, but my mind is racing too fast to allow myself to sleep. A few things are finally starting to come together for me.

Mordavia is an entirely different place by night. After slipping out of the window in my room and floating over the gate, I came to rest at the garden in front of the town. The pumpkins themselves seemed to glow like jack-o-lanterns, channeling some excess magic that was thick in the air. They say that no one goes out at night in Mordavia, that there are dark things which rule in the realm where the sun retreats and shadow reigns. Everyone locks up in Mordavia by the time the sun even begins to set. I was on my way to being the only living expert on the subject of whatever it is that goes bump in the night.

I crept to the east, feeling the leaves crunch beneath my feet and disturb the stillness of the cool night air. I had decided to head towards the outskirts of the cemetery, to see if Igor's clientèle were making full use of their tombs. As I trudged forward I began to feel a slow numbing sensation, like all the warmth was being sucked out of the air around me. There was a mound of rocks in the dead center of a grassy clearing, which I could have sworn was bare just a few hours earlier. An unearthly chill began to burn at my bones and I felt my strength slowly ebb. I started to back away, as a glowing red light started to dance around the stones, and a dark blue mist began to materialize in front of me. I tripped and fell backward, and the mist began to form hands, and a face with a dark scowl. It flickered, and I could see right through if I stared hard enough. I finally began to run away, and felt a crackle of blue magic sizzle behind me. I kept running until the warmth gradually crept back into my bones and finally fell to the ground, huddling for warmth by the brook south of town.

That same night I saw two more mounds of rocks scattered throughout the fields of Mordavia, but I kept my distance after that. I'm convinced the mounds represent the last resting place of some malevolent spirits, possibly slain in the forest and guarding their last treasures. None of the mounds were present by daylight, something about these creatures must only allow them to appear after the sun sets. I'm getting the feeling that I'm in way over my head on this one, I'm not about to tangle with the undead just yet, I may be courageous but I know my limits better than most.

I nearly panicked when a more mobile creature of the night starting crawling its way out of the ground and plodding towards me. It was some kind of an undead revenant, a mindless mobile corpse likely spawned from more of the dark influences in the valley. Flesh hung loosely off of its bones like a poorly tailored suit, and it seemed drawn to me on the basis of my life force alone. It chased me over the stream in the forest, but thankfully the revenant shuffled away when I reached the glowing lanterns of Erana's garden. Not wanting to rest there just yet, I started to head south and noticed something else that hadn't been there before. A circular fountain had appeared in the clearing outside Erana's garden, with water spewing into it from the mouth of a cherub statue kneeling on the rim. The air felt cooler than in the rest of the forest, and I could sense the presence of some powerful enchantment at work. I leaned in to examine an arcane inscription around the base of the fountain, and finally knelt down to take a sip of the water. It was sweet, like strawberries, and I found myself drinking heavily before I knew it and my vision begin to blur. I felt my body falling backwards as the forest began to swim around me and fade to black. I can only remember being vaguely disappointed that I was stuck drinking alone again.

I don't know how long I was out, the sky was still dark and nothing had changed in the forest. While I was unconscious I dreamed about a woman with a high-pitched voice speculating on whether or not I was likely to get myself killed before I'd be of any use to "them". And there was something vaguely profound over whether I'd learn to use the magic of Mordavia or be consumed by it instead. I was more than willing to take up the other half of the argument, whatever it was, but before long I found myself snapping awake in the middle of the forest again with no trace of the fountain. I was more than a little bit freaked out, but at least no one tried to rob me this time.

This just adds to my pool of questions of course. Why would someone set some sort of an enchanted trap for me and not bother to harm me or even take anything from me? Was it just a test? The fact that they didn't bother with any of my possessions just makes me think whatever they want from me they're still waiting for. I still know nothing about whoever brought me here or why, but with my reputation someone probably intends to turn me loose in a particular direction and pick up the pieces afterwards. Either by having me kill some undead guardian or using me as a stooge in a power play against some other villain they expect me to get rid of. Whoever my "benefactors" are that brought me here they don't trust me enough to tell me what they want or consider me enough of a threat to themselves to get rid of me. And whoever planted the trap for me tonight apparently considered it a trivial matter to examine me and be rid of me. If I play the altruistic adventurer and strike out at wherever I think the problems of Mordavia lie I have no way of knowing that I won't just be playing into their hands. I've resolved to be on my guard from this point onward, someone here has an interest in me and I should figure out what they want before I do anything drastic.

Aside from the undead wraiths and zombies polluting the countryside, the one other quasi-spiritual entity I encountered was lighter on the antisocial tendencies and about as confused as I was. A pale blue figure that looked like she had once been a blond haired woman haunted a particular region of the forest. In addition to being incorporeal and transparent, she was surprisingly communicative. She seemed quite certain that she just got lost during a stroll in the forest, and if she could just get back to the town everything would be all right. The strange thing was that she couldn't remember her name or why she went out there in the first place, there were a lot of topics she seemed uncomfortable with. I tried leading her towards the town or out of the forest but she disappeared whenever she moved too far away from the clearing, she seemed rooted to the spot. She was very badly scared, and barely able to hang on to whatever memories she kept with her. After a while she was able to remember that she was in the forest picking blackberries to make a pie for her husband, but couldn't remember what happened next or why she was unable to leave. Even mentioning the topic of ghosts or the undead to her brought her nearly to the point of tears. Eventually she disapparated altogether and I was left standing alone.

I can only assume the woman must once have been Nikolai's wife Anna, trapped in the place where she must have died. She's still searching for him as desperately as he is for her, but I don't know what I could do for either one. Nikolai refuses to let himself believe she's dead, and she is apparently in denial about her own state as well. And I don't know that they could move on or be reunited until both of them admit it.

I checked out the castle gates just to see if they offered any other avenue of entry now that the gatekeeper was off his shift, but a pack of vicious necrotaurs waited on the other side. Even if I could levitate over the enchanted barrier, I'd be ripped to pieces before I reached the ground. Deciding I'd seen enough for one night, I headed back to the town gates following the light of the glowing jack-o-lanterns in the pumpkin patch. Waiting for me in the mist was my official welcome woman, Katrina.

And so we come to the real reason that my heart is still racing and I haven't been able to fall asleep. This woman is unlike anyone I've ever met. She was hiding in the mists around the town gates, but her face lit up when she saw me and she rushed out to greet me. She seemed genuinely excited to see me and upset that I'd managed to hurt myself. I was offered a healing potion and she taught me a magical spell to help protect myself. "Frost Bite." From my simple experiments so far, it seems to freeze the entire air around wherever you cast it. This is a lot more useful than it would first appear. Most of my other spells, force bolt, flame dart, and lightning ball for example, work by attacking its target directly with magic, and are therefore vulnerable to magical wards or a simple reversal spell. This one simply freezes the air and lets the cold do the job. It may not be particularly helpful with the undead monsters who make no claim at being warm blooded, but I expect it will come in handy.

Apparently magic is as much a part of her lifeblood as it is of mine. She claims she lives at the castle, which I had already guessed, but was reluctant to speak any further. Boris only mentioned three people he knew of in the castle, the master, a male foreigner, and the master's daughter... I'd have to assume Katrina is either the master's daughter or else a servant employed in the castle. She seemed just as cautious of the dangers of Mordavia as everyone else... and yet, less fearful somehow and more concerned for me. We spent some time talking about my adventures and everything that had led me here. She seemed to hang on my every word.

It's very difficult for me to try to write objectively at the moment because I'm still viewing everything I saw or heard through a rosy prism. She's beautiful, magical, and maybe the one friend I have here. A couple times her hands brushed softly against mine and our eyes met... and I _know _she wouldn't be risking herself in the forest this late if she hadn't desperately wanted to see me too. But there seems to be something that frightens her too. She seems guarded, and unwilling to let herself go or talk about some things. Sometimes she would get excited and speak faster as we spoke or move in closer to me, then seem to catch herself and slink back or cast her eyes downward. She excused herself, saying she needed to hurry back to the castle before they noticed her missing. I should be asking myself what information she can get me or whether or not she could even sneak me into the castle, but I found myself caring mostly about when I would get to see her again.

I just remembered to check the main lobby of the inn to see if the Domovoi would appear. It was crouched on top of one of the counters, with a sad expression on its face. It's apparently some kind of a helpful spirit designed to make people happier, but things in Mordavia are beyond its ability to remedy. He says the gnome in the inn, the innkeepers Yuri and Bella, Olga and Boris, and even the Domovoi himself all need help.

Despite being rather cryptic, the Domovoi was more willing to talk about the problems in Mordavia than anyone I've met so far. I told him about how I was a hero and I wanted to help things, and he warned me to stay away from the castle. Something terrible is brewing in Mordavia he said, and he's worried I'll get myself killed before I can fix any of it. The Domovoi knows a few things about the valley I hadn't figured out yet. He advised me to stay away from the undead, although not all undead are purely evil. Some are ghosts, trapped in this plane until they realize their fate and let go of this world, and some spirits are reborn as Rusalka. Rusalka are drowned women whose spirits try to drown people as some sort of karmic revenge, although the Domovoi claims they're just misunderstood.

The Domovoi says there's another Domovoi trapped somewhere in a "very bad place." He said the door will eat me if I don't use a magic symbol. I asked if he meant the monastery built by the cult of the dark one and he nodded slightly. Inside is another Domovoi who's been trapped for some time, left completely dried out and unable to move. If I can help his friend, he says he'll help me in return. This would actually mean trying to enter the monastery without getting killed, but I've been putting that one off for long enough. We'll see if I can cheat death from the dangers of Mordavia again.


End file.
